Inverted Totalitarianism: A Preface
by Sheldon S. Wolin
A
“Certain tendencies in
our society point in a
direction away from
self-government, the rule
of law, egalitarianism,
and thoughtful public
discussion, and toward
what I have called
‘managed democracy.’”
s a preliminary I want to
emphasize certain aspects of
the approach taken in this
volume in order to avoid
possible misunderstandings.
Although the concept of totalitarianism is
central to what follows, my thesis is not that
the current American political system is an
inspired replica of Nazi Germany’s or George
W. Bush of Hitler. References to Hitler’s Germany
are introduced to remind the reader of the
benchmarks in a system of power that was
invasive abroad, justified preemptive war as a
matter of official doctrine, and repressed all
opposition at home—a system that was cruel
and racist in principle and practice, deeply
ideological, and openly bent on world domination. Those benchmarks are introduced to
illuminate tendencies in our own system of
power that are opposed to the fundamental
principles of constitutional democracy. Those
tendencies are, I believe, “totalizing” in the sense
that they are obsessed with control, expansion,
superiority, and supremacy.
The regimes of Mussolini and Stalin demonstrate that it is possible for totalitarianism to
assume different forms. Italian fascism, for
example, did not officially adopt anti-Semitism
until late in the regime’s history and even then
primarily in response to pressure from Germany.
Stalin introduced some “progressive” policies:
promoting mass literacy and health care;
encouraging women to undertake professional
and technical careers; and (for a brief spell)
promoting minority cultures. The point is not
that these “accomplishments” compensate for
crimes whose horrors have yet to be fully
comprehended. Rather, totalitarianism is
capable of local variations; plausibly, far from
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being exhausted by its twentieth-century versions,
would-be totalitarians now have available
technologies of control, intimidation, and
mass manipulation far surpassing those of that
earlier time.
The Nazi and Fascist regimes were powered by
revolutionary movements whose aim was not only
to capture, reconstitute, and monopolize state
power but also to gain control over the economy.
By controlling the state and the economy, the
revolutionaries gained the leverage necessary
to reconstruct, then mobilize society. In contrast,
inverted totalitarianism is only in part a statecentered phenomenon. Primarily it represents
the political coming of age of corporate power
and the political demobilization of the citizenry.
Unlike the classic forms of totalitarianism,
which openly boasted of their intentions to
force their societies into a preconceived totality,
inverted totalitarianism is not expressly conceptualized as an ideology or objectified in public
policy. Typically it is furthered by power-holders
and citizens who often seem unaware of the
deeper consequences of their actions or inactions.
There is a certain heedlessness, an inability to
take seriously the extent to which a pattern of
consequences may take shape without having
been preconceived.
past four centuries that promoting innovation
became a major focus of public policy. Today,
thanks to the highly organized pursuit of
technological innovation and the culture it
encourages, change is more rapid, more encompassing, more welcomed than ever before
Change became a private
enterprise inseparable
from exploitation and
opportunism.
—which means that institutions, values, and
expectations share with technology a limited
shelf life. We are experiencing the triumph of
contemporaneity and of its accomplice, forgetting,
or collective amnesia. Stated somewhat differently, in early modern times change displaced
traditions; today change succeeds change.
The effect of unending change is to undercut consolidation. Consider, for example,
that more than a century after the Civil War
the consequences of slavery still linger; that
close to a century after women won the vote,
their equality remains contested; or that after
nearly two centuries during which public
schools became a reality, education is now
T
he fundamental reason for this deepseated carelessness is related to the
well-known American zest for change
and, equally remarkable, the good fortune of
Americans in having at their disposal a vast
continent rich in natural resources, inviting
exploitation. Although it is a cliché that the
history of American society has been one of
unceasing change, the consequences of today’s
increased tempos are less obvious. Change works
to displace existing beliefs, practices, and expectations. Although societies throughout history
have experienced change, it is only over the
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served the Few while keeping the Many in
ignorance, poverty, and sickness.
An important element in this early modern
conception of progress was that change was
crucially a matter for political determination
by those who could be held accountable for
their decisions. That understanding of change
was pretty much overwhelmed by the emergence
of concentrations of economic power that took
place during the latter half of the nineteenth
century. Change became a private enterprise
inseparable from exploitation and opportunism, thereby constituting a major, if not the
major, element in the dynamic of capitalism.
Opportunism involved an unceasing search for
what might be exploitable, and soon that meant
virtually anything, from religion, to politics,
to human well-being. Very little, if anything,
was taboo as, before long, change became the
object of premeditated strategies for maximizing profits.
It is often noted that today change is more
rapid, more encompassing than ever before. I
shall suggest that American democracy has
never been truly consolidated. Some of its key
elements remain unrealized or vulnerable;
others have been exploited for antidemocratic
ends. Political institutions have typically been
described as the means by which a society tries to
order change. The assumption was that political institutions would themselves remain stable,
as exemplified in the ideal of a constitution as
a relatively unchanging structure for defining
the uses and limits of public power and the
accountability of officeholders.
Today, however, some of the political changes are revolutionary; others are counterrevolutionary. Some chart new directions for the nation
and introduce new techniques for extending
American power, both internally (surveillance of
citizens) and externally (seven hundred military
bases abroad), beyond any point even imag-
being increasingly privatized. In order to gain
a handle on the problem of change, we might
recall that among political and intellectual circles,
beginning in the last half of the seventeenth
century and especially during the eighteenthcentury Enlightenment, there was a growing
conviction that, for the first time in recorded
history, it was possible for human beings to
The war enlarged the scale
of an increasingly open
cohabitation between the
corporation and the state.
deliberately shape their future. Thanks to advances in science and invention it was possible to
conceive change as “progress,” an advancement
benefiting all members of society. Progress stood
for change that was constructive; that would
bring something new into the world and to the
advantage of all. The champions of progress
believed that while change might result in the
disappearance or destruction of established
beliefs, customs, and interests, the vast majority
of these deserved to go because they mostly
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ined by previous administrations. Other changes
are counterrevolutionary in the sense of reversing social policies originally aimed at improving
the lot of the middle and poorer classes.
How to persuade the reader that the actual
direction of contemporary politics is toward a
political system the very opposite of what the
political leadership, the mass media, and think
tank oracles claim that it is, the world’s foremost exemplar of democracy? Although critics
may dismiss this volume as fantasy, there are
grounds for believing that the broad citizenry
is becoming increasingly uneasy about “the
direction the nation is heading,” about the role
of big money in politics, the credibility of the
popular news media, and the reliability of voting
returns. The midterm elections of 2006 indicated
clearly that much of the nation was demanding
a quick resolution to a misguided war. Increasingly one hears ordinary citizens complaining
that they “no longer recognize their country,”
that preemptive war, widespread use of torture,
domestic spying, endless reports of corruption
in high places, corporate as well as governmental,
mean that something is deeply wrong in the
nation’s politics.
because of the great freedom it allowed, was
inherently prone to disorder and likely to cause
the propertied classes to support a dictator or
tyrant, someone who could impose order, ruthlessly if necessary. But—and this is the issue
addressed by our inquiry—what if in its popular culture a democracy were prone to license
(“anything goes”) yet in its politics were to be-
The emergence of the
corporation marked private
power unconnected to a
citizen body.
come fearful, ready to give the benefit of the
doubt to leaders who, while promising to “root
out terrorists,” insist that endeavor is a “war” with
no end in sight? Might democracy then tend to
become submissive, privatized rather than unruly, and would that alter the power relationships
between citizens and their political deciders?
A word about terminology. Superpower
stands for the projection of power outwards.
It is indeterminate, impatient with restraints,
and careless of boundaries as it strives to develop
the capability of imposing its will at a time
and place of its own choosing. It represents
the antithesis of constitutional power. Inverted totalitarianism projects power inwards. It
is not derivative from classic totalitarianism
of the types represented by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or Stalinist Russia. Those regimes
were powered by revolutionary movements
whose aim was to capture, reconstitute, and
monopolize the power of the state. The state
was conceived as the main center of power,
providing the leverage necessary for the mobilization and reconstruction of society. Churches,
universities, business organizations, news and
opinion media, and cultural institutions were
I
n the chapters that follow I shall try to
develop a focus for understanding the
changes taking place and their direction.
But first—assuming that we have had, if not a
fully realized democracy, at least an impressive
number of its manifestations, and assuming
further that some fundamental changes are
occurring, we might raise the broad question:
what causes a democracy to change into some
non- or antidemocratic system, and what kind
of system is democracy likely to change into?
For centuries, political writers claimed that
if—or rather when—a full-fledged democracy
was overturned, it would be succeeded by a
tyranny. The argument was that democracy,
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economic activities would be coordinated,
exchange values set, and demand and supply
adjusted. It operated, as Adam Smith famously
wrote, by an unseen hand that connected
participants and directed their endeavors toward
the common benefit of all, even though the
actors were motivated primarily by their own
selfish ends.
One of Smith’s fundamental contentions
was that while individuals were capable of
making rational decisions on a small scale, no
one possessed the powers required for rationally
comprehending a whole society and directing
its activities. A century later, however, the whole
scale of economic enterprise was revolutionized
by the emergence and rapid rise of the business
corporation. An economy where power was
dispersed among countless actors, and where
markets supposedly were dominated by no one,
rapidly gave way to forms of concentrated
power—trusts, monopolies, holding companies,
and cartels—able to set (or strongly influence)
prices, wages, supplies of materials, and entry
into the market itself. Adam Smith was now
joined to Charles Darwin, the free market to
the survival of the fittest. The emergence of the
corporation marked the presence of private
power on a scale and in numbers hitherto
unknown, the concentration of private power
unconnected to a citizen body.
Despite the power of corporations over
political processes and the economy, a determined political and economic opposition arose
demanding curbs on corporate power and influence. Big Business, it was argued, demanded
Big Government. It was assumed, but often
forgotten, that unless Big Government, or even
small government, possessed some measure of
disinterestedness, the result might be the worst
of both worlds, corporate power and government
both fashioned from the same cloth of selfinterest. However, Populists and Progressives of
taken over by the government or neutralized or
suppressed.
Inverted totalitarianism, in contrast, while
exploiting the authority and resources of the
state, gains its dynamic by combining with other
forms of power, such as evangelical religions,
and most notably by encouraging a symbiotic
relationship between traditional government
and the system of “private” governance represented by the modern business corporation.
The result is not a system of codetermination
by equal partners who retain their distinctive
identities but rather a system that represents the
political coming-of-age of corporate power.
W
hen capitalism was first represented in an intellectual construct,
primarily in the latter half of the
eighteenth century, it was hailed as the perfection of decentralized power, a system that,
unlike an absolute monarchy, no single person
or governmental agency could or should attempt
to direct. It was pictured as a system, but
of decentralized powers working best when
left alone (laissez-faire, laissez passer) so that
“the market” operated freely. The market
furnished the structure by which spontaneous
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the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
as well as trade unionists and small farmers,
went a step further to argue that a democratic
government should be both disinterested and
“interested.” It should serve both the common
good and the interests of ordinary people whose
main source of power was their numbers. They
argued, perhaps naively, that in a democracy
At the same time that the war halted the
momentum of political and social democracy,
it enlarged the scale of an increasingly open
cohabitation between the corporation and the
state. That partnership became ever closer
during the era of the Cold War (l947-1993).
Corporate economic power became the basis
of power on which the state relied, as its own
ambitions, like those of giant corporations,
became more expansive, more global, and, at
intervals, more bellicose. Together the state
and corporation became the main sponsors
and coordinators of the powers represented
by science and technology. The result is an
unprecedented combination of powers distinguished by their totalizing tendencies, powers
that not only challenge established boundaries
—political, moral, intellectual, and economic
—but whose very nature it is to challenge those
boundaries continually, even to challenge the
limits of the earth itself. Those powers are also
the means of inventing and disseminating a
culture that taught consumers to welcome change
and private pleasures while accepting political
passivity. A major consequence is the construction of a new “collective identity,” imperial
rather than republican (in the eighteenth-
The destiny of their
country is fast slipping
from popular control.
the people were sovereign and government was,
by definition, on their side. The sovereign people
were fully entitled to use governmental power
and resources to redress the inequalities created
by the economy of capitalism.
That conviction supported and was solidified
by the New Deal. A wide range of regulatory
agencies was created, the Social Security program
and a minimum wage law were established,
unions were legitimated along with the rights
to bargain collectively, and various attempts
were made to reduce mass unemployment by
means of government programs for public works
and conservation. With the outbreak of World
War II, the New Deal was superseded by the
forced mobilization and governmental control
of the entire economy and the conscription of
much of the adult male population. For all
practical purposes the war marked the end of
the first large-scale effort at establishing the
tentative beginnings of social democracy in this
country, a union of social programs benefiting
the Many combined with a vigorous electoral
democracy and lively politicking by individuals and organizations representative of the
politically powerless.
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century sense), less democratic. That new identity
involves questions of who we are as a people,
what we stand for as well as what we are willing
to stand, the extent to which we are committed
to becoming involved in common affairs, and
what democratic principles justify expending
the energies and wealth of our citizens and
asking some of them to kill and sacrifice their
lives while the destiny of their country is fast
slipping from popular control.
I want to emphasize that I view my main
construction, “inverted totalitarianism,” as
tentative, hypothetical, although I am convinced that certain tendencies in our society
point in a direction away from self-government,
the rule of law, egalitarianism, and thoughtful
public discussion, and toward what I have called
“managed democracy,” the smiley face of
inverted totalitarianism.
For the moment “Superpower” is in retreat
and “inverted totalitarianism” exists as a set of
strong tendencies rather than as a fully realized
actuality. The direction of these tendencies urges
that we ask ourselves—and only democracy
justifies using we—what inverted totalitarianism exacts from democracy and whether we
want to exchange our birthrights for its mess
of pottage.
Sheldon Wolin is professor emeritus of politics at
Princeton University. This is the preface, drawn from his
recent book, Democracy Incorporated, © 2008 by
Princeton University Press and reprinted with their
permission.
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